Such plugs are used as electrical connections for electronic devices of all types in large numbers. In the course of miniaturization of such devices, the plugs of the devices are applied directly on the printed circuit boards upon which the electronic components of such devices are arranged.
The printed circuit boards which can be especially formed of multilayer circuit boards, have a high packing density of their conductive tracks and components. The electronic components are applied to the respective printed circuit boards by means of mounting automatons automatically and are there soldered in place. The production of such assemblies is referred to as the SMD (Surface Mounting Device) technique.
With this technique at low fabrication cost, complex arrangements of components on printed circuit boards can be fabricated in arrangements of relative small size.
It is, however, a problem to integrate plugs in this kind of fabrication process. The use of plugs as SMD components is indeed basically known, but the automatic application of such plugs and their connection to the conductors of the printed circuit board is associated with significant drawbacks because of the relative sizes of such plugs. As a consequence, such plugs are typically soldered by hand to the printed circuit boards, which undesirably increases the fabrication costs of such devices. A further significant problem resides in that application of such plugs to the printed circuit board should be capable of insuring that the unit which is thus formed will have the smallest possible size.